Just Plodding Along

Last week was full of all the feels. An end of an era really. My time working and coaching at Up and Running has come to an end. On Tuesday we had a celebration and I was super surprised when my awesome boss awarded me with a beautiful plaque. Cue tears. Damn it, I wasn't gonna cry. I had kind of forgotten how many training groups I had coached and it was cool to see them listed all together. A lot of my runners came from current and previous groups and it was so great to see them. I feel very lucky that I was hired at Up and Running and that I got to work for and with so many amazing people and gain so many friends. I will really miss coaching and hope I can do more of it in the future.  There was also ice cream involved but we forgot to get it out at the party so guess who got to take it all home. Not mad about that....that's okay, fitting in your pants is overrated.  Because I really wanted to cry more than once last week, on Thursday I ha...

The perfect thing to do one week after a full marathon is to run a half marathon that is seven miles uphill followed by five miles of screaming downhill. This will allow you to test your bodies rate of marathon recovery. If you only cry a little you are mostly recovered. Full sobs mean you need more time. I kid. I kid. The only reason to run a half marathon a week after a full is if you get to run it with these amazing people! TransMountain training group. We know how to party. The training group I coach has been training hard for months for this  half marathon and there was no way I was going to miss it. Plus it is the last year of this particular race for a few years so I also wanted to tackle it myself. The race starts on the west side of El Paso runs up and over on TransMountain through the Franklin Mountains and then down to the Northeast side of El Paso. Pretty much 7 up and 5 down followed by a stretch of slightly uphill/ flatish to the finish. I pretty much said a ...